Mathias had begun to breathe heavily as we exerted ourselves on the trolley. I slowed down a bit on my end and reached down to switch the motor on, but the old man stopped me.

“Don’t pity me. I endure better than you imagine.” He growled.

“I just thought it would help, I know you don’t have the strength I’ve been granted.” I try to not sound condescending, for he is many years my elder and I knew my “super-strength” was something he resented.

“My humanity is my strength.” He grunted as he pushed down on the lever hard, prompting me to rejoin him. I sigh to myself at his stubbornness. We had been together for years now, patrolling the borders, and I could still never tell if he was jealous of my abilities or just crazy. He wasn’t much for opening up and I had been understanding of that. His body had twice rejected sight augmentations given to him at birth and he had lived his whole life as a blind man. He had fallen in love with sound, his favorite being the tram tracks beneath us. I had always assumed that’s why he had joined the militia, although his inability to see wouldn’t help much against hostile intruders. We never saw much action anyway.

After a long look at him, which I know he feels somehow, I decide to stare at the fence flying by to our right. It towers high above us and remains clean, untouched. It was merely the inner fence, the last defense. Our job was more to check the surrounding bases than to patrol the border, I suppose. I try to think of the last time I had seen the walking husks we patrolled for. The Outer Cell had much more fun with all that, while I just stuck with Mathias on the easy train, being the only one willing to be around him. His old voice broke the hum of the tram again. Although his sound was deep it seemed to deaden the noise around it.

“Do you smell that?” Mathias didn’t often ask questions of me, unless he meant them as commands. So, I sniff the air and we slow the cart a bit under his unspoken direction. 

“It smells… like stillness.” I almost ask.

“It smells rotten.” He growls, almost angrily.

I look around at the path ahead. Mathias groans and turns slightly to hold the lantern forward as if trying to see what was surely ahead of us. Everything is silent for a moment, I can almost taste it.

“Death.” Mathias whispers. The soft light of the lantern bounced of a figure in the road. We speed toward it but it stands rigid. It’s a bleached man in a long coat staring intently at the road below. He isn’t one of the undead but something else, something unknown. Mathias is breathing heavy as we approach and the man suddenly makes a move at us. A blade flashes from his nearest hand and Mathias is impaled into the fulcrum of the handcar. The lantern falls immediately down and sets the cart aflame causing me to fall from it directly onto my sidearm.

The burning cart initially sheds a ton of light on my foe, but it continues down the tracks, leaving me behind with no regard for my distress. The man stands still until the cart has gone, then makes his next deliberate movements toward me. My head is spinning but I manage to loose my gun from its holster. He rushes me so I put two shots in his chest. 

My bullets fly true and I see flesh and blood splatter, but he doesn’t yield. He keeps after me and my disbelief has me locked to the spot. Too late to run I squeeze off some more metal and it barely makes him twitch. He grabs me from the front and holds a knife to my throat pausing for a split second so that I may see his face. It is pale and eyeless, red and dark at the creases and holes. It wasn’t angry or vengeful,  but emotionless. I gasp uncontrollably. I was not his prisoner and he had nothing to say to me. As the knife thrusts forward my last sight is of unbridled and unreasonable evil.

…

The body drops and the blade is returned to its hiding place. With tension released and two unclean entities disposed of, the scene changes from hot violence to the serenity of the dark forest ahead. Disposing the bodies is foremost, then finding shelter to post before moving on toward the center. Wait and listen for direction before future dealings. This has been the first establishment to have guns, the bullet wounds will take time and rest to heal. Then the entirety of the colony is due for exploration and likely, much cleansing.